An Ambitious Woman. Fawcett Edgar
oranges to suck or sticks of striped candy to munch; there were buxom women and spare women, massive men and slim men, little girls and little boys, all huddled together, quite often three or even more on a seat. But in the whole long panorama of human visages, as it glided past her, Claire could not discern a single trace of solemnity. The impression of mere hollow and senseless form was produced, by this crude cortège, with complete and dismal success. Nobody—with the slight exceptions recorded—seemed to be sorry that Mr. McCafferty had made a permanent departure from the liquor-business.
"I wonder why they come, if they are not sorry," Claire said to herself, as she reëntered the town, leaving the great serpentine funeral behind her. "I suppose it is because of the ride. They seize on even this grim excuse for getting a little pastime." … Then her thoughts took a new, self-questioning turn. "And what reason have I to pity them and call them 'poor'? They come here only in the way of holiday, but I never get a glimpse of anything better or worse, month after month. I dare say there are worse places than this. I should like to see one, if there really are, just for the change."
Passing back through the unlovely streets again, Claire had a desire to be near the water before she returned in-doors. She now regretted not having gone thither at first, instead of taking her dolorous inland walk. It was nearly sunset; the twilight had not yet learned to loiter, as it does in maturer Spring, and a gloom had already crept, with purplish effect, into the sweet pale azure of the heavens. Claire made as short a cut toward one special place at the water's edge as her regretted familiarity with Greenpoint would permit, and presently stood on a raised spot close beside the river. It was a bare scarp of earth, touched faintly, here and there, with the most meagre intervals of struggling green. Its site commanded the delightful view beyond, and now, at the ruddy but transient advent of evening, this view was peculiarly delightful. You saw the wrinkled river, drab and tremulous, under a stretch of sky which the sinking sun had made from verge to zenith a turmoil of little rosy and feathery clouds. Each cloud had the damask glow, without its fleetness, that we see in the scales of a darting trout. The whole ember-colored array arched over the wide stream in brief, unusual brilliancy, and stole now and then from the gray waves beneath it a slight gleam, no larger than the bud of a carnation, but quite as rich-hued. Just beneath Claire was a low, uncouth, many-patched hut, near to the muddy strand, and looking not unlike something that had drifted up from aqueous recesses with the intent of making itself habitable for men. A ragged contiguous wharf had been built here, at whose edge, when summer came, small boats would be grouped to let. A little northward, great yellowish piles of lumber loomed, tier after tier, with big sloops moored beside them, and with one acute red pennon, on one slim mast, blown out bright against the darkening air. Steamboats and sail-boats were slipping over the ruffled river, these urged by their steady mechanic push, those winning the capricious breeze to favor their full-stretched canvas. Beyond, in dusky, irregular semicircle, lay the opposite city. Its many church-spires pierced the dimness, but all its other traits of architecture, viewed at this distance, had a flat, massed look. There was something symbolic in the isolated saliency of these spires; they seemed to typify the permanence of a faith which had already defied centuries. But still more, their vague group merged every detail of creed into one pictorial whole; you forgot, as you gazed, what various paths toward salvation this or that steeple might be supposed to point. The whole effect was simply and powerfully Christian.
Claire fixed her eyes upon the shadowy city. A few early lights already dotted its expanse with gold, as if to outspeed the tardier stars overhead. It spread away, for the gaze that watched it, like a huge realm of fascinating mystery. Claire forgot how much sin it hid; perhaps she scarcely knew if it hid any. She thought only of the diversions, relaxations, festivities that would soon hold sway there. Odd memories of her old school-fellows crossed her mind. Doubtless Ada Gerrard was there now, thinking of some new robe in which she would show her plump white neck with the little freckles on it, that very evening. It should be a pale-blue dress, Claire decided; that would suit Ada's red hair the best. How full was the big city, yonder, of happy, handsome, prosperous people! And so many of them were saying, now that the nightfall had begun, "I shall go to this ball to-night," or "I shall go to that theatre." They were getting the theatres ready for the plays, now; the entrances were being lighted. She could see Wallack's and the Union Square, each with its small court and the baize doors beyond. Oh, how pleasant it would be to do something, to look at something, to hear something, to-night, that she had not done and looked at and heard, again and again, for weeks and months past! The girl's blood and bone hungered for a holiday. She must go back home, soon. And there was only one thought to make the prospect of return endurable; that thought was meeting her father. But he would be tired; he was always more tired nowadays than in other times. When he lay upon the lounge in the basement, and she got the stool and sat down beside him, he would smile to have her put both arms round his neck and press her cheek up close to his, but he would go to sleep very soon afterward; he would be so tired that he would forget even to ask her if she had had a hard time with her mother that day. And then her mother would grumble a hint that the dishes were yet to be washed, and she would take her arms away from the beloved neck, and scrape and clean for quite a long time; and then she would get sleepy, more because she remembered how early she must rise to-morrow than because a very little diversion would not have made the alert young lids loath to shade her eyes for hours to come.
It would all be the same as on other nights. It was always, every new night, the same as on that which went before. There was the dull burden of it. When would the burden be shifted? Would it ever be shifted? Would it not merely grow heavier, and slowly crush her down, till her back should get the crook of age, and so bear it with better ease?
She went nearer to the edge of the hillock, and set her eyes once more upon the city, as if for a farewell view. Its lights had become more numerous; the tips of its spires were lost in tender vapor. Above, the tiny scraps of luminous cloud had begun to fade; the river had roughened and grown dull, and there was a damp keenness in the freshening breeze. That exquisite melancholy which is sure to breathe from evening when it sheds a spell over the triple charm of blended sky, land, and water, was now in the full tide of its lovely power.
Claire lifted her hand to her lips, and waved a kiss toward the glooming city. It was a pretty gesture, and so furtive and stealthy that it might have fled the notice of any one who stood quite close at her side. And the low words that now succeeded it, too, were just low enough to escape such heed, though their sense might easily have met a possible listener with the effect of broken and half-audible speech.
"Good-night," she said to the city. "Good-night, and be merry for hours to come. You seem just like something alive and breathing, but I know that if you had one mind and one heart to think and to feel with, instead of the thousands and thousands that you have got, you would pity me because I'm so sorry that this big, cold river is always between us!"
Claire nearly broke into a laugh at her own soft and quaint little apostrophe. Like most lonely people who dislike their solitude, she often felt the temptation to soliloquize; especially since her imagination was vigorous, and sometimes loved, as well, to let mount from its wrist the agile falcon of fancy. But a practical bent, as we call it, and a rather sharp sense of the humor of things besides, usually mingled to repress this volatile impulse. As it was, she gave a strong, tired sigh instead of a laugh, and turned her face homeward, though not her steps quite yet, for she still remained standing on the mound beside the water.
"My holiday," she thought, "is over." She did not know that it was just beginning.
Her last action had brought her into abrupt contact with a girlish figure, whose countenance she might have recognized had not the dusk so deepened.
V.
"I was mos' sure 'twas you, Miss Twining," said the new-comer, holding out a hand to Claire, "so I run a little further up the hill, jus' to make reel certain sure."
"Well, you were not wrong, Josie," said Claire, giving her own hand. It did not occur to her that she had been called "Miss Twining" and had answered by "Josie." In this case she took her rights of superiority